Samir C. Debnath

Dr. Samir C. Debnath, a senior Research Scientist of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and an Adjunct Professor of the Memorial University of Newfoundland (Biology) in Canada, has authored and co-authored around 140 publications in peer-reviewed journals including review papers and book chapters. He has been a keynote speaker and an invited speaker at a number of international and national conferences and meetings, was the President of the Newfoundland and Labrador Institute of Agrologists (P.Ag.) and the Canadian Society for Horticultural Science and the Editor-in-Chief of Scientia Horticulturae. Much of his current work focuses on micropropagation, biodiversity and genetic enhancement for high antioxidant containing berry crops using in vitro and molecular techniques combined with conventional methods.

The understanding on epigenetics at molecular level will help to overcome the drawbacks of in vitro culture and maintain the clonal fidelity in micropropagules. The presentation will provide an in-depth study of various aspects of small fruit micropropagation, phenotypic variation in micropropagated plants and the epigenetic effects on these variations along with the role of DNA methylation, to fill the existing gap in the literature.